Archive: January 2025

Hi everyone, this is my first full week back since the new year! But it has certainly gone by so fast.

On Monday, I was in the shop with Josh, we worked through loads of our online orders to get them shipped out as quickly as possible. I served one of our regulars, who is absolutely loving the Tabernacle Knight Commander, he said it is the best that Foundation Cigars has ever released! It is exclusive to Norfolk so you need to come here to purchase for yourself! Later on I spent some time with Porscha, explaining how we order stock and with which supplier, she did an excellent job and I would like to think she will be confident enough to do it more in future. 

Tuesday was my marketing day. I started by writing a slightly smaller article for the C.Gars cigar library. It is about why a lot of Scotch whiskies names start with “Glen”, you can read why by clicking here. Afterwards I carried on with completing the shop newsletters, I enjoy reading what they will be getting up to in February and some of their photography is brilliant but in some instances I do have to train them on how to take a picture of certain items, but I do love training people. In the afternoon I spent some time organising the March New World Subscription. It is very difficult to decide which cigars to put in each month but I think a lot of you will enjoy what I have chosen.

On Wednesday, I was back in the shop with Josh. We had a lot of price changes come through in the night so we spent a lot of time changing them on the till system and on our shelves, as well as picking our online orders. It can be difficult to do all these changes but patience and plenty of coffee always does the trick. We have also started an in-store offer on our pipes! We are offering 20% off all pipes (not in conjunction with any other offer). One gentleman took advantage of this offer and purchased a beautiful Savinielli Monsieur as well as some Peterson pipe tobacco. 

On Thursday, I was joined in the shop, for the first time in a while, by Ciaran. We worked through our online orders and then back to more price changes! Afterwards I had a look in the pipe room and saw some of the displays were missing pipes so I filled them up and then organised the pipes that weren’t on display, I just love a nice organised shelf! In the afternoon, I helped Billy and Josh with their New World stock count. Billy and I have decided to train the rest of the staff on stock counts so we can occasionally swap out if we need to. I could see Josh and Billy were a little bit behind so I jumped in and counted what I could and I think it really gave them a boost.

On Friday, I was given time to alter my newsletters. All newsletters get checked over before they go out in case there are any mistakes, or if someone has any recommendations. I only had a couple of minor tweaks to do and then I scheduled them all. I then helped the shop staff with labels for pipes that needed to be put out on the shelf and afterwards I created the New World Subscription leaflet for March, ready for the team to pack ahead of time.

I hope you have enjoyed this weeks going on in and I hope to see you all in Norfolk very soon.

So long for now.

Oliver.

Hi everyone! It has been another great week in Norfolk today, with one of my favourite customers coming in to purchase a special box of cigars.

My week started on Tuesday, I was working on my own in the shop, so I spent my time stocking up the Cuban humidor, as well as putting different ranges of Davidoffs on the shelves. I came across the Davidoff Grand Cru Diadema and thought it looked incredible so I put them on the shelf. I served one of my favourite customers who had been visiting since before I started at Turmeaus! He came in looking for a box of Davidoff Winston Churchill The Artist Limited Edition 2025 Churchill as well as one single. He does this every time Davidoff releases a Limited Edition Winston Churchill. He purchases a full box and a single so he can smoke the single and keep the box in the humidor to re-sell or enjoy himself if he really enjoys them. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a full box, so he purchased the single, then decided on a Davidoff Yamasa Toro and a Davidoff Maduro Toro Limited Edition. I then spoke to our humidor manager to see if we could get a box in for him and it turned out our products administrator had the box! So I quickly phoned him (in my customer service voice) and let him know we actually had a box for him! He happily came back and purchased the box, I then got him to sign up to C.Gars Plus so he can start collecting points and using our rewards system. 

On Wednesday, I was joined in the shop with Josh. After our online pickings, we spent time organising the shelves. Afterwards we had a nice sit down just to talk about different cigars. Josh smokes a lot more cigars than me and so I like to learn from his smoking experience, we also spent time researching brands we haven’t tried. It’s a great thing to do as we discover some great cigars that we can promote to our customers – one example was the Casa Magna Colorado which sounds like a little gem of a brand, they are rolled in the Plasencia factory and is also a Nicaraguan Puro, so if you like strong coffee with a cedar sweetness, this is your brand to try!

Thursday was my marketing day. I had received an article from our Humidor manager Billy about the top 10 cigars of 2024 and it makes for an interesting read on the C.Gars cigar library. As expected the top cigar of 2025 was the Mitchellero Robusto. I spent some time taking the pictures and editing them to make it clear which cigar is which. You can read it here. Afterwards I completed two shop newsletters, ready to be sent at the start of February (crazy to think ahead already!). We also had a team meeting discussing new ways to make ourselves more efficient, this may mean you might not see your favourite shop assistant as much any more but I have not gone anywhere! Feel free to ask for me if you want me to make an appearance. 

On Friday, It was another blast from the past for me as I found myself in the packing department! Porscha and I worked together to get all of the online orders packed ready to be sent to their awaiting recipient!

I hope you have enjoyed this week’s blog and I hope to see you all in Norfolk very soon.

So long for now.

Oliver.

Hi everyone, I have actually enjoyed plenty of time off this week, but I have seen the rest of the team have kept our customers very happy with plenty of cigars and spirits.

I came back in on Thursday and it was my marketing day. Firstly I had our first marketing meeting of the year. We discussed how well our Christmas and New Year marketing went and then discussed our plans for Burn’s night and looked ahead to April Fools day,  which will be brilliant! Keep an eye out for that! We then started to discuss the spring/summer edition of the C.Gars magazine. If you have ordered on C.Gars recently, you would have received the autumn/winter edition, which has been enjoyed by many. I look forward to taking part in the next magazine and seeing what brilliant content we create. Afterwards I started writing my article for the C.Gars cigar library, it was about a commonly asked question – the impact of cigar size on flavour. This one was a fascinating read for myself and I’m sure you will enjoy it too. You can read it by clicking here. Afterwards I spent some time taking pictures for the article. In the afternoon, I wrote a news article about the new My Father The Judge. I have looked forward to seeing these as I know they are incredibly popular in the USA and I decided to take a nice picture of them too for the news page, which you can see here.

On Friday, I was back in the shop with Josh. I got through our online order pickings and started to stock up our humidors. The New World humidor needed a lot of attention as New World cigars have been very popular with our customers recently and I can’t blame them. I prefer New World cigars as I find they have a lot more flavour to them due to the brands being able to experiment with different blends of tobacco from different countries. After stocking I ordered extra stock that we were running low with as well as worked on putting new ranges out. You’ll have to come in-store to see what we have! Meanwhile one of my regular customers came in to purchase two boxes of Regius Orchant Seleccion 2023 Hermosos as well as using his online points for two bottles of Ramos Pinto 10 year old Tawny Port, it certainly seems like he’s in for a great night! In the afternoon, Josh and I worked through the Cuban stock count.

On Saturday, Porscha and I were joined by Ciaran. He was happy to be in and helped us stock up the shelves in the shop as well. We also changed one of the display cases, we decided to take our selection of aftershave back into the store room and put out a brilliant range of cigar ashtrays. I find ashtrays are a very underrated accessory which makes them a brilliant gift. 

I hope you have enjoyed this slightly shorter blog and I hope to see you all in Norfolk very soon.

So long for now 

Oliver

Hi everyone, it has been a long time since I have posted! We have been so busy in store and online that I haven’t had the chance to keep you all updated! So what has been going on?

Well we enjoyed a lovely Christmas period but we certainly came back to a lot of online orders! So on Monday Josh and I spent most of our day picking orders as quickly as we could. In between I served one of my favourite customers who loves the Inka Secret Blend Red Bombaso Maduro. He treated himself to a box of those and the Liga Privada no. 9 Flying Pig and then said, “Can you tell I have been paid?” which made me laugh a bit. I then served a lovely couple. The gentleman wanted a cigar to enjoy on New Years Eve, we talked through a few and he chose the Mitchellero Peru Robusto Extra, he then asked if his wife wanted one to which she said only a small one, to which I pointed out the Petit Robusto. They both left very happy ready to enjoy the New Year celebrations.

Tuesday was New Years Eve, I was in the shop with Sarah, however I was trying to get marketing tasks done in between. Firstly I went upstairs to take pictures of the Cigars of the week for January. As it is already January I can actually show you the picture I have took, which you can see below:

Once I was happy with those pictures, I decided to update the other monitor in our Cuban Humidor. We recently received some beautiful cigar cases from a brand called VSB London, as soon as I saw them, I knew I had to advertise them. Have a look at them for yourself by clicking here. Later on in the day, I had a family come in looking for a couple of Davidoff Signature No. 2 to enjoy and then afterwards needed some advice for their humidor. It sounded like they had an issue and it has caused their cigars to go dry and crisp and they wanted to know if they could be saved. A lot of the time you can actually save them by putting the cigars in a ziplock bag at 65% humidity and then gradually bring them back up to 72%. It doesn’t work all of the time but it certainly has rescued a lot of my customers’ cigars in the past. I did say for them to bring their humidor in and I can have a look to see if the humidor is up to standard.

I got to enjoy New Years Day off with my family and then we were back in on Thursday doing our quarterly building stock count. This is a special one as we have to close the shop and not pick any orders for the duration to ensure there is no mistakes. My team was Josh and Sarah and we had to count all of the cigars. So that is the whole of the Cuban humidor, New World humidor and the packs in the main shop! As many of my loyal readers would know, it usually takes all day to count the New World humidor so to add the Cuban Humidor and shop packs, certainly takes a lot to do! We separated into two teams. Josh and Sarah did New World and I did Cuban on my own. I was confident I could complete it in the day but I was never expecting to have completed the Cuban Humidor by 1 o’clock! Afterwards I counted all of the packs in the shop and then helped Josh and Sarah with their stock take. 

On Friday, it was Josh and myself. We had all of the previous day’s pickings to do as well as Fridays! Josh and I worked through them as quick as we could and then went to work updating our displays. The Christmas decorations have been taken down and Josh created a lovely centre display using the Stylish Whisky bottles. They are great presents and look funky, I wish I had thought of it! And the centre piece was the Davidoff Cigar and Glass Sampler. For the brilliant price of £99.99 you get two incredible Davidoff cigars and two beautiful whisky glasses that also act as a cigar stand! I’m tempted to get it myself!

On Saturday, It was Josh and myself again. We worked through our online orders and then we received a massive delivery from one of our suppliers! So together we worked through it and put it away neatly ready for Monday morning. 

I hope you have enjoyed this week’s blog I am now on annual leave for the next three days so I hope you say hello to the team while I am gone!

So long for now

Oliver